Forget About Kimchi, Here Comes Brownie

Guess what’s the new hottest omiyage (gift in Japanese) from South Korea? A brownie. A big box of processed brownies at that.

Recently, a video of two Japanese girls’ shopping activity has gone viral on YouTube. In the video, apparently shot by a South Korean shopper and viewed more than 146,000 times, the women stack up boxes of Market O’s Real Brownie in three big carts.

According to Lotte Mart, one of the biggest supermarket chains in South Korea and the one in the video, the chocolate brownie is indeed a huge hit. For the past six months, it has been the best selling product among Japanese customers.

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Courtesy of Orion Co.

The special package of Market O’s Real Brownie

The trend is notable because the store, and its Seoul Station outlet in particular, is one of the most visited shopping destinations by Japanese tourists.

Its Seoul Station outlet has around 1,300-1,400 daily Japanese visitors, or about 60~70 percent of all foreign visitors, largely due to its close proximity to popular tourist areas including Myeongdong, a famous shopping district, department stores, and hotels.

The popularity of the cookies drove Lotte Mart and Orion Co., the confectionary company that makes them, into catering to the specific needs of the Japanese customers. Last September, the two launched a special large package that is only available at the aforementioned outlet at W16,000 ($15).

“We noticed that they would buy at least 3-4 boxes at a time,” said Chung Yong-hwan, a spokesman for Lotte Mart, “so we thought a bigger package would be a big hit.” The original box has seven individually packaged brownies in it but the Japanese-customized package is four times larger with 28 brownies. The measure has, so far, proven successful.

Since the introduction, monthly sales of the product at the outlet have reached around 100 million won ($94,000), up by 244 percent before its launch.

The number is “huge,” given overall national sales of 2.5 billion won, said Lee Sang-min, a spokesman for Orion. The company has started exporting the brownies, in the original size, to Japan in September.

“In Japan, you don’t easily get brownies in a mart, and the price is usually expensive,” said Mr. Lee.

Meanwhile, the number of Japanese tourists has decreased by 7.2 percent to 1.1 million for the first five months of this year, according to the Korea Tourism Organization. But they were still the biggest overseas travelers to South Korea, followed by Chinese (353,001) and Thais (118,906.)